Merton's empirical functionalism, social structure and anomie, and neo-functionalism

1. Why “empirical” functionalism

Robert King Merton (1910–2003), Parsons’s student at Harvard and later at Columbia, set out his position in “Manifest and Latent Functions” in Social Theory and Social Structure (1949). He wanted functional analysis to be tied to observable consequences and to theories of the middle range, rather than to a grand scheme like Parsons’s. Hence “empirical” functionalism.

2. Critique of the three postulates

Merton found three assumptions in earlier functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski) and rejected each.

1. Postulate of functional unity of society. That all standardised activities are functional for the society as a whole. Merton: this may hold for small, integrated societies, but in complex ones an item can be functional for some groups and dysfunctional for others. Religion may unite one community and divide a plural society.
2. Postulate of universal functionalism. That every standardised social or cultural form has a positive function. Merton: some items have no function, some are dysfunctional; the question is the net balance of consequences.
3. Postulate of indispensability. That certain institutions are necessary and cannot be replaced. Merton: the same function can be met by different items; he introduced functional alternatives (equivalents or substitutes).

3. Key concepts

• Function: observed consequences that make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system.
• Dysfunction: consequences that lessen adaptation or adjustment.
• Non-function: consequences irrelevant to the system.
• Manifest functions: consequences intended and recognised by participants.
• Latent functions: consequences neither intended nor recognised. Merton’s example is the Hopi rain dance: manifestly it is meant to bring rain; latently it reinforces group identity. Veblen’s conspicuous consumption raises social status beyond the use of the goods bought.
• Net balance: the overall weighing of functions and dysfunctions.

4. The paradigm for functional analysis

Merton offered a paradigm (a codified checklist) for anyone doing functional analysis. Its main items:

1. The item to which functions are imputed (roles, institutions, norms) must be a standardised, patterned item.
2. Concepts of subjective dispositions (motives, purposes) must be kept separate from objective consequences.
3. Concepts of objective consequences: functions, dysfunctions, manifest and latent.
4. The unit served by the function must be specified (individual, subgroup, society).
5. Functional requirements (needs, prerequisites) must be established, not assumed.
6. The mechanisms through which functions are fulfilled must be identified.
7. Functional alternatives must be considered.
8. Structural context: the range of possible variation is limited by the structure.
9. Dynamics and change: dysfunctions produce strain and so change.
10. Problems of validation: comparative and cross-cultural methods.
11. Ideological implications: functional analysis is not inherently conservative.

5. Social structure and anomie

In “Social Structure and Anomie” (American Sociological Review, 1938) Merton recast Durkheim’s concept. For Durkheim anomie was normlessness, a breakdown of regulation. For Merton anomie is a disjunction between culturally prescribed goals and socially structured, legitimate means of reaching them. American culture holds out monetary success to all, but the social structure limits access to legitimate means (education, good jobs) for many. Deviance is therefore a normal response to a structural strain, not a personal pathology.

(+ acceptance, − rejection, ± rejection and substitution of new goals and means.) Merton predicted more innovation in the lower classes, where the gap between goal and means is widest, and more ritualism in the lower middle class.

Criticism: it assumes a single dominant goal; it explains property crime better than violence; it treats adaptation as individual, whereas Albert Cohen and Cloward and Ohlin showed that deviant responses are group and subcultural.

6. Neo-functionalism

By the 1970s structural-functionalism was in retreat. In the mid-1980s Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy launched neo-functionalism (Alexander, ed., Neofunctionalism, 1985). Alexander argued that Parsons’s work should be revised, not abandoned, much as neo-Marxists had revised Marx.

Alexander listed its main tendencies:

1. A descriptive model of society as a system of interrelated parts, without assuming that the parts are always integrated.
2. Equal attention to action and order, and to expressive as well as instrumental action.
3. Integration as a possibility, not a fact; deviance and social control are both real.
4. Distinct but interpenetrating personality, culture and society, each with its own tensions.
5. Differentiation as the main mode of change, extended by Neil Smelser and Colomy to include uneven and conflict-laden differentiation.
6. Multidimensionality: rejecting both pure materialist and pure idealist explanation; linking micro and macro levels.
7. Openness to conflict, power and culture, borrowing from Marxists and interactionists.

Related work includes Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, which recast Parsons using the idea of self-reproducing (autopoietic) systems. Alexander himself, in Neofunctionalism and After (1998), moved on to a “strong program” of cultural sociology, admitting that neo-functionalism had been a transitional movement.

How this is examined

“Explain the empirical functionalism of R.K. Merton” (April 2022): three postulates, key concepts, the paradigm, a line on middle range theory. “Social structure and Anomie” (six marks, August 2024) and “Anomie” (October 2023): Durkheim versus Merton, then the table. “Briefly explain neo-functionalism in sociology” (10 marks, April 2022): why Parsons declined, Alexander’s tendencies, Luhmann, and Alexander’s own later verdict.